By Edwin Cooney
The history of Mother’s Day is the story of white and red carnations and sentimental tears. It’s the story of states, anxious to get in on the ground floor of the celebration of mother love, rapidly endorsing Mother’s Day. Additionally, it’s the story of the effort of Anna M. Jarvis, the founder, who wanted to stop its increasing commercialization.
Father’s Day was also initiated in love, but it took a more circuitous path to full acceptance. Initially celebrated in Fairmont, West Virginia, not far from Grafton, West Virginia (the home of Mother’s Day), Father’s Day was originally designed to celebrate the 210 lives lost in the December 6th, 1907 mining disaster in nearby Monongah, West Virginia. The date scheduled for the first Father’s Day celebration was July 5th, 1908. Mrs. Grace Golden Clayton, the actual founder of Father’s Day, wanted the first celebration to be as close to the birthday of her late father as possible. That occasion was obviously swallowed up by the simultaneous Mother’s Day movement out of nearby Grafton. Fairmont’s inaugural celebration of Father’s Day was lost to posterity until 1972.
Two years later, Sonora Dodd of Spokane, Washington spearheaded a more successful national Father’s Day movement to celebrate her dad and all other dads. In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson went to Spokane to celebrate Father’s Day. A bill for the national recognition of Father’s Day was introduced into Congress, but defeated out of fear that it might become a commercial venture. The same thing happened a second time in 1916. By the time of Congress's second rejection of Father’s Day, forty-five states had already passed Mother’s Day into state law.
In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge issued a resolution in support of a Father’s Day celebration but stopped short of having it introduced as an act of Congress. "Ole man" — that’s how Coolidge privately referred to his male friends including members of his cabinet and his congressional colleagues — Calvin was too smart to trust Congress with such an important idea as Father’s Day!
During the revenue--starved 1930's, the Menswear Retailers Association established a committee on the promotion of Father’s Day. The committee's name was changed in 1938 to the National Father’s Day Council.
Unlike Anna M. Jarvis, the founder of Mother’s Day, Father’s Day founder Sonora Dodd didn’t at all object to the commercialization of Father’s Day! Hence, shirts, ties, handkerchiefs, and hats sold almost as fast as flowers. Good cigars probably weren’t far behind!
In 1957, Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, one of the lovelier members of the United States Senate, scolded her colleagues and everyone else for having short shrifted American fathers during the past forty years of Mother’s Day celebrating.
In 1966, Lyndon B. Johnson, the modern daddy of all good things, signed a resolution making Father’s Day the third Sunday in June.
Not to be outdone, another good politician by the name of Richard Milhous Nixon who in 1972 was seeking a second term as President, signed the bill into law designating the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day. Thus it might legitimately be observed that Father’s Day was, to a considerable degree, the brainchild of smart politicians and practical businessmen with that essential touch of “daughter love” thrown in to give it respectability!
As stated above, most of the state legislatures were agreeing to honor mama’s love while Congress twice rejected the idea of honoring father. Might it be that mothers as loving nurturers elicit a stronger emotional reaction -- especially by male state legislators -- than practical and often demanding, busy fathers? Since commercialization of both motherhood and fatherhood was inevitable, shouldn't we face the rather uncomfortable realization that our most sincere sentiments are most powerfully expressed by the willing sacrifice of our most powerful possession: our money?
Inevitably, some parents are more worthy of their children’s adoration than others, but since our sons and daughters freely withhold or proffer their love, our individual or collective worthiness of that love is legitimately and properly beyond our say-so. Thus, we may accept that honor with those seemingly opposite feelings of humility and satisfaction.
I know, as surely as I live and breathe, that others have done more and done better by their children than I have by my two lads, but I can without the slightest doubt tell you this:
If you’re a man, the highest honor you’ll ever receive is when someone calls you Dad!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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